In a moment of lateral thinking I have an idea that will save you the cost of buying side marker LED's to fit to your Alembic or any other bass or guitar for that matter.

These ones will fit any scale length instrument and will not require you to install a battery either inside or externally to your instrument.

In fact they are very environmentally friendly and require no external power source.

They are very easy to install and requires no modification to your instrument at all. They can be seen very easily from your playing position looking down on the edge of the neck without being dazzling, and will not be seen by your audience unless you choose to install them on the front of the neck which I decided not to do.

Are you still interested. Theres more... They can be removed without affecting the finish of your intrument, and will not affect the balance of it either.

How can that be I hear you ask?.

Well let me share this money saving tip with you. (Do I sound like one of those travelling salesmen lol?)

I don't know why I never thought of this before but. Years ago I bought some of these luminous self adhesive stars and shapes that you stick on the ceiling of a room and when you turn the lights off at night and the room is dark they glow so your ceiling looks like the night sky.

Recently I decided to add more since over the years some had dropped off the ceiling. I got a pack of 500 stars/shapes for £4.00 uk pounds.

Then it suddenly hit me, that they would also work if I stuck them over the position markers on the edge of my guitar.

So I picked some of the round ones off the sheet fitted it to the guitar and turned the lights off.... bingo. perfectly illuminated position markers.

According to the instructions,exposing to 10 seconds of light gives you up to 1 hour of glowing time. I doubt if anyone is gonna be in the dark on stage for an hour so, you should never run out of glow time during a gig.

I know they probably will come off in time with contact with my thumb and heat, humidity etc but then you have the other 400+ to replace them with. And its damn cheap.

I have had a look and there are some on ebay and many sites on the net.

I have not used them on a live stage yet but I have in my practice room at home with the lights off and they are perfectly visible.

I have a gig next weekend so will see how well the shape up. Jazzyvee.

Well, after on the road testing the super cheap alternative side LED's this weekend, I have reached this simple conclusion.

Whilst the idea is sound, it has some limitations which are probably due more to the way that the human eye reacts to changes in light that anything else.

This weekend I was playing at a reggae festival in Poland. What I found was that when the stage lightinq was doing its thing it was very bright.

When the lights went off at various times, there wasn't time for my eyes to adjust to the new brightness to see the glowing position markers on the guitar neck before the next song started as they were much lower in intensity than the previous bright light.

So it seems that they may not be ideal in all circumstances.

I guess because the Alembic LED's or other types of Led's are powered you are gonna see them all the time when the light levels drop fast or gradually.

Anyway I'll leave them on the guitar and see how they fare on the concerts I have this week. Let me know if you try them I'd be interested in your views. JAzzyvee